Milkweed Bugs

If you grow milkweed, more than likely you have seen this orange-red and black insect. It is the milkweed bug. Milkweed bugs feed on the pods and seeds of milkweed. They are harmless and can be good for controlling milkweed overpopulation in the home garden. The downside to that is that they damage and cause deformity to the seed pods preventing collection of seeds for those who would like to grow more milkweed.

They have a lifespan of about one month and during that time the female can lay up to 2000 eggs. Like ladybugs, they do not go through complete metamorphosis; they go through a series of molts. You can see the varying instar stages in the collage above.

This year they were prolific in my garden and were treated as pests. They were either smashed or collected in a bucket of soapy water. Not to worry, there are still plenty there to control my milkweed population!

I hope everyone is having a great weekend. I am thankful for the rain this morning. The flowers were drooping and the grass was just about dead. I am looking forward to some cooler weather! We have had the opposite summer compared to last year. Instead of the cool rainy weather, we have had a very hot and dry summer with twenty-eight days of temperatures in the 90's. I don't think we even hit 90 last summer.

Thank you all for your kind comments and the welcome back!

Summer is Here!

Summer is in full swing around Robin's Nesting Place. A few volunteer sunflowers, (compliments of the bird feeders), are beginning to bloom. Most of them are small and insignificant, but this one was a beauty. I also planted a variety mix that is growing fast and will be blooming soon.

The butterflies have finally arrived! I've been watching for them for several weeks and was beginning to wonder if they were avoiding my butterfly garden.

The Monarchs seem to prefer the coneflowers.

I'm not 100% sure if this one is a comma or a question mark butterfly, but it looks like a comma to me.

The liatris is blooming.

The bumblebees and wasps are plentiful here this year. I don't mind the bumblebees and will get pretty close to get a picture. They are always so busy they don't seem to notice. The wasps, on the other hand, are given wide berth.

I have several projects that need to be completed. I moved a few plants and have holes in the butterfly garden. I bought some topsoil a few weeks ago to fill the holes and never got around to doing it. I'm a little concerned about using this top soil. Can you imagine the weeds I'll have in my garden?
Along with summer comes the pests. Thousands of Japanese beetles have descended and are devouring the sweet potato vines, roses, and birch tree leaves along with other plants and leaves. One of the arborvitae was covered with small bagworms, which seems to to be their plant of choice. Last year I got really interesting pictures of the worm.

I hope these are not the eggs of the bagworm. I'll be keeping a close eye out for this arborvitae, just in case. Thankfully it hasn't been to hot and we've had plenty of rain, so I've only had to water plants a few times.

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Roly-Poly Problem

The blue-eyed grass started blooming this week. I took pictures a few days ago and all three of the plants appeared to be healthy. I was very concerned today when I noticed that one of the plants was nearly dead in the center. On closer inspection I noticed that the plant was full of pillbugs or roly-pollies . The grass was falling over and none of the pieces were firmly in the ground.


I gathered them up and planted them in other containers, hoping to salvage them. I checked other things in the gardens and noticed the spiderwort was looking distressed as well. I pulled back the mulch and noticed the pillbugs were all at the base of that plant too.

We have had a very wet spring, so that may be a contributing factor to the plague of pillbugs. I've always had them but have never had this many and I've never noticed them eating my plants before.

I've been having difficulty keeping any of my new plants alive because as soon as I plant them they are eaten. I don't know if the pillbugs are eating all of the young plants, but I know for certain they are responsible for the damage to the blue-eyed grass.

I researched on line trying to find a natural way to kill them. One suggestion was to wet newspaper, roll it up and lay it beside the plant they're eating. They will crawl inside because they like damp places and in the morning the papers can be collected and thrown away. I did this tonight and placed about 10-12 rolls of paper around the flowerbeds. I hope it works, but I can't imagine that it will eliminate them as quickly or as effectively as might be necessary. Has anyone else had this problem? What is a good, natural method for reducing the number of pillbugs?

Indoor Garden Update

I think I would go absolutely nuts if I didn't have a little gardening to do inside during these long winter months. Here is a little update on whats going on right now in my indoor garden.

The gerbera daisies have almost made it to spring. I've had at least one of them blooming at one time or another throughout the winter.

The pink one is blooming now. I took over a hundred pictures of it this morning, with three different cameras, trying to get the lighting correct and a good close-up.
I still am not satisfied, but I'm tired of editing pictures.


For some reason, I love the center of these flowers. It looks like little ribbon curls in there.

The sun was streaming in through the window while I was having the photo session with the gerbera and I notice the back of the flower.

I'm usually so focused on the front that I haven't really paid attention to the back. It's actually quite beautiful too.

The red gerbera has new buds and a full bloom too.

The yellow one has a new bloom and seems to be the healthiest of the five, with a lot of new green growth. I am having a problem with white flies and gnats at the moment and have to spray regularly with soapy water.

I don't think I've ever mentioned that I brought in four containers of the sweet potato vine to winter over, (2 blacks and two chartreuse). They all have new growth and are doing well inside. I plan to get cuttings and propagate new plants from them. I also saved some of the tubers from the plants I discarded. I don't know if they will be any good, since I didn't store them properly. I just threw them in an open box in the garage, it may have gotten too cold for them.

I'm beginning to wonder if I started the impatiens too early. I started them at the end of February last year and they weren't quite ready at planting time. These seem to be thriving and growing quickly. I'll soon have to plant them in a larger container.

This little experiment isn't going so well. The lantana seeds need warmth to germinate, with the lid on it gets too humid and stays too moist. Now I have some kind of algae or moss growing on my peat moss. I may try to heat from the bottom and leave the lid off. Does anyone have any advice? I know it's a long shot growing these but I'm not ready to give up yet.

It will soon be time to start my other seeds, but before I do I really need to get rid of the fungus gnats. Any suggestions on that little problem?